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The basic case for Universalism, or why hell must be temporary
Let’s talk about where your soul is going after you die.
A heavy way to start the article, eh? Unfortunately, this type of heavy handed language is often used by Christians to imply that non-believers or even Christians with the ‘wrong’ theology will go to hell. Not just go to hell, but go to hell FOREVER!
This frankly insane strategy has been quite successful, especially in Protestant culture. The threat of hellfire and brimstone and being poked by a demon’s trident for eternity is extremely effective at scaring some people into a brittle, false kind of faith.
Especially sensitive, neurotic, and generally imaginative types like myself.
Sadly though, while it may bring some people back to faith and have use on the margins, it tends to drive people away from Christianity more than anything. Almost every Christian apostate I’ve talked to has some story of religious trauma, where their parent or friend or pastor told them if they didn’t live a perfectly saintly life, they were going to hell.
They then obsessed over their eternal fate until they got so neurotic, so afraid, so twisted up inside they had to decide that the whole damn religion was fake. And honestly, I don’t even blame them.
So this article is meant as a quick overview of the idea of eternal hell - where it came from, and whether or not it’s valid. To be clear, this is just my own research to get a basic understanding, I’m not a theologian and I won’t be going extremely into the depths on this one.
I’ll also admit up front that even before I did this research, moral intuition insisted that eternal hell is not a true teaching. I can’t conceive of a good and loving God who creates a universe in which legions and legions of His creations, made in His image, are tortured brutally for all eternity. It simply makes no sense whatsoever.
After living as an atheist/buddhist for over ten years, I followed my moral intuition and the voice of God in my heart to Christ and the Orthodox church, so I was conflicted when I first started wondering about the fate of the damned. I was pleasantly surprised to find that many others in the Orthodox and Catholic churches felt the same way, and that the argument against eternal punishment had a long and storied history.
Some basic definitions:
Universalist: Holds that all will ultimately be saved
Infernalist: Holds that some face eternal punishment from God
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The Bible Said So
If you were raised by a certain type of Christian parent, you’ve probably been threatened with hell.
It’s sadly common in Christian circles: “do X or you’ll go to hell!” The fact that we casually threaten children with eternal torment is a bit crazy, but hey, culture is weird sometimes.
Where does this come from? Well, there are a lot of admonitions in Scripture about how sin leads to punishment in the afterlife:
Matthew 25:45
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Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
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And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
Thessalonians 1:7
- They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…
Revelation 14:10
- And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.
Now, a straightforward reading of the English here would indicate okay, yes, if we are sinners in this life, or at least don’t pass the bar for God, we go to hell forever. To suffer, and be tormented, over and over and over, without ceasing.
Pretty scary stuff.
However, many scholars have argued that these translations are… faulty, to say the least. The argument typically hinges on the translation of the Greek phrase “kolasin aiōnion,” which has often been translated as “eternal punishment,” and the Greek phrase “eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn,” translated as “forever and ever.”
The problem comes in when you realize that the word “aiōnion” has a dual meaning in ancient Greek - it could either mean:
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A really long time! Literally “until the end of the age,” which in practice just meant a really long time
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Actually forever, infinite, eternal. Will never cease. Trillions and trillions of years go by and it’s still happening
The debate hinges on which of the two time periods these phrases actually refer to. Universalists are not just pulling this out of their rear ends, so to speak. There are uses of aiōnion in the Old Testament that clearly refer to a temporary happening, such as when Moses blessed the “eternal hills” of Joseph’s land in Deuteronomy 33:15, or the “eternal fire” of Sodom in Jude 7.
Another major debate is over the doctrine of “apokatastasis,” or the promised restoration of all things in eternity. Many classical writers, most notably Saint Paul, talked about this concept. Specifically:
Colossians 1:19–20 “through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven”.
1 Timothy 2:4 “God desires all people to be saved.”
2 Peter 3:9 “not wishing any to perish.”
1 Corinthians 15:22–28 “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ… that God may be all in all.”
I could go on and on. There are all sorts of minor debates over other terms, and theological minutiae. Suffice to say, there is no clear cut, black and white answer as to whether Scripture declares eternal punishment, and the popularity of the infernalist versus universalist position has oscillated back and forth throughout Christian history depending on when and where you look.
The Church Said So
For the Orthodox and Catholic (and some Protestant) believers, we luckily have an institution to interpret Scripture for us: the Church!
Pretty much every infernalist, when backed into a corner and made to doubt their understanding of eternal torment, will immediately turn and say, “well the Church teaches that the damned suffer in hell forever!”
As in the section above, they aren’t necessarily wrong, but they also aren’t completely right.
So, what does the Church actually say? I’ll focus on the Orthodox church here, but ultimately the major decision point was well before the schism of 1054, so this section applies mostly to both Catholic and Orthodox doctrine.
This discussion centers around the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553. Imagine a room full of men with long beards, in fancy robes, full of the Holy Spirit, conferring in the heart of Constantinople, at the Hagia Sophia. (Arguably the most beautiful church in the world at the time, though sadly a mosque now.)
So all of these guys get together to discuss some problems in the early church, and figure out what was going on. A side character in this drama, a man by the name of Origen of Alexandria, had caused some problems with interpretations of his teachings a while back, and he was on the list to discuss.
Specifically, Origen believed in the pre-existence of souls before birth, and reincarnation after death, as well as universal reconciliation or the restoration of all things and beings. Even the devil, and fallen angels!
The council ruled definitively that this specific system of Origen’s belief as a whole was condemned. The line that is often trotted out, which I admit looks quite bad, is as follows:
“If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration [apokatastasis] will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema.”
The way most universalists combat this objection is that:
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This was referring to Origen’s overall system, not specifically claiming that the damned are tormented forever or even giving a concrete definition of punishment in the afterlife
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The ‘restoration’ discussed here is actually referring more to Origen’s belief that humans existed somehow outside the body before birth, and would be ‘restored’ to that state afterward. Not how most universalists use ‘restored’, to mean reconciled to God.
To be absolutely clear on this point: there is no specific Church dogma that definitively declares the damned are punished eternally. In fact, glorified saints such as Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Isaac the Syrian explicitly taught universalism and held universalist positions until they died, and have not been condemned by the Church.
I emphasize this because when you wade into online discussions of universalism versus infernalism, the argument via doctrine is by far the most common problem infernalist argument you see. Sadly many people see this argument then simply take it at face value that their church believes the damned will be tortured forever, not being bothered enough by that teaching to actually check for themselves.
So again, in terms of actual church doctrine, just like with interpretation of Scripture, we have a somewhat murky picture in which neither the universalist or infernalist position clearly wins out.
I’ll add as well that at least in the Orthodox tradition, church doctrine is not strictly binding forever and ever as it is in the Catholic church. The councils are not perfectly infallible. Through consensus and the living tradition of the Church, our dogmas and doctrines can be updated as new information or revelations come out.
So even if there was a strong consensus that infernalism was what a council taught, it could be changed!
Sadly, many ‘Orthobros’ in America have converted from Protestant backgrounds where “sola scriptura,” or a strict black and white, legalistic understanding of the faith, is the default worldview. Even after conversion, this way of seeing the faith is carried over, and they tend to try and use church councils as a bludgeon, with a liberal use of the words “heresy” and “heretic.”
You’d think if they cared so strictly about the rules they would let the bishops decide who was heretical instead of taking it upon themselves, but that’s how it goes on the internet.
Meaninglessness or the Noble Lie
Finally I will give a notable mention to another couple of arguments.
The first goes something like: “life has no meaning if there isn’t eternal punishment.”
Another argument is that the doctrine of eternal hell acts as some sort of “Noble Lie,” where it’s not really true, but the masses just aren’t ready to understand the truth and they will act up if they learn that they’ll eventually go to heaven.
Speaking about universal salvation online, I’ve gotten well over a dozen responses forwarding these lines of belief. They aren’t very compelling to me, so my only guess here is that these people have a misunderstanding of the actual universalist position.
When a universalist argues that God will reconcile all things in the end, they are not saying that hell doesn’t exist. Instead, simply that hell is not eternal.
For instance, if you have somebody really bad like an unrepentant serial killer die and go to hell, they may be there a long, long time. Perhaps hundreds, thousands, or millions of years, subjectively. That still constitutes an extremely strong reason to avoid sin, and work out your salvation! Just because hell isn’t fully, forever eternal, does not mean hell has no value as a deterrent.
Eternity, forever, infinite, etc. are complicated concepts, and it makes sense as to why people wouldn’t really grok it or be able to reason about it well. Heck, I don’t even understand it fully, and there are some tricky arguments about how true Eternity is “outside of time” that make eternal punishment make sense. I don’t want to get into that here.
In conclusion, if you are a Christian of any stripe, even Orthodox or Catholic, and you want to hope for universal salvation, you are well within your rights to do so. No church has explicitly condemned it, and there are very good reasons to believe it. As I owned up to in the beginning of this article, I see it as a requirement to satisfy my own moral intuitions about the goodness of God. How could a loving Father create children in His own image knowing many, or even most, are condemned to eternal torture?
Be warned however that if you decide to hope for universal salvation, you may want to keep it close to your chest. The infernalist position tends to correlate with extremely dogmatic, rigorist, and frankly spiteful believers who are often extremely difficult to have open and productive conversations with. I’d caution you against arguing too much, unless you’re like me, and simply can’t help yourself.
All this being said, I also want to emphasize the fact that not all universalists are going to heaven, and not all infernalists are going to hell. Having the ‘right belief’ does not give us a free pass. We must love one another, and purify our hearts to the best of our ability. As a wise friend cautioned me during this discussion:
Where is the heart? are there tears of longing for light, and love, and holiness, for the capacity to heal others? on either side of the universalist/infernalist debate, there are people whose hearts are longing for God, and people who are just manipulating words with pride and worshipping their minds.
I hope this article has been helpful or at least interesting for you, and may we all move our hearts closer to God.
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Notes -
I am fond of the CS Lewis formulation of hell (as I am with many other topics in Christian thought): people in hell are there by choice, not because God bars them from heaven. The suffering of hell, then, is not a divine punishment, but ultimately self-inflicted (since God is the source of all good things, by choosing to set yourself apart from him one chooses to forego good things and only suffering can be left). I think that Lewis illustrates this interpretation of hell quite nicely in The Great Divorce, where he envisions hell as a dreary gray town where most people are insistent on staying, even though they hate it there, because they believe that the bus that takes one up to heaven is some manner of trick and that they are better off where they are. But for those who do choose to go, they find in the end that hell was really purgatory for them, once they left it behind.
As far as the topic of universalism goes, I can't say I really know one way or the other. I certainly hope that all will be saved, and I like Bishop Barron's phrasing of "we may hope that hell is empty". And I must confess that the victory of Jesus over sin feels somewhat hollow if, in the end, there are those who will not be saved, even if it be by their own choice. However, I do believe that God respects our free will, even if we choose to be apart from him, even if we never come to our senses and realize that we made a bad choice by remaining apart from him. And given human nature, it is difficult to imagine that every single human will ultimately choose to humble his heart and say to God "thy will be done". So it is therefore hard to imagine that hell will be empty, in the end. But I do hope it will be, even though I doubt if I'll ever have certainty in this life.
I enjoyed the Great Divorce, but found it somewhat unsatisfactory! I guess my view is that if people have literally forever to choose, they will eventually get fed up with hell and come to God, because He will not abandon them.
That being said, some sort of oblivion/destruction of the soul could be feasible after the End of Days, or whatever you want to call it. I don't love it but it's at least a far more justifiable argument compared to eternal conscious torment.
Well, it is fiction of course, and not meant to be taken as an authoritative view on hell. But I would say that my experience with human nature has left me quite convinced that people will not necessarily give up on a mistaken belief, even if it's causing them suffering. An imperfect analogy here would be addicts. My brother in law was an alcoholic, and an outside observer could see how much suffering his drinking was causing for him. Not just that he couldn't hold down a job and all that, but it ruined many of his relationships, left him being angry and bitter on a daily basis, and was destroying his body. Everyone around him, literally everyone, clearly saw that the bottle was destroying him and that he would be better off if he could give it up. But he never could admit that he needed to stop, not up until the day he died. I realize that a human lifetime's scale is very different from forever, and that's what makes the analogy imperfect. But my experience has shown me that the human mind has a great capacity to double down, even in the face of great suffering. So it isn't impossible for me to believe that someone might choose hell for all eternity.
I will say that I think the "eternal conscious torment" theory is bunk. Like you said, it simply does not fit with a supposedly loving God. But even an infinitely loving God can't (or rather won't) force people to love him, so I think that hell as a self-inflicted privation of good, rather than a punishment, makes sense. Beyond that, though, it's hard to say. Perhaps the "souls outside heaven will eventually be annihilated" people are correct, perhaps the "all will eventually choose to submit to God" people are correct, perhaps the "after we die we don't get to change our minds because spiritual beings can't change their minds" people are correct. I don't know, but thankfully it doesn't keep me up at night or anything.
Yeah I'm with you here. I think I am the type of person it does keep up at night, and there are many like me. Even the idea that eternal conscious torment could be true, and the fact that so many Christians loudly proclaim it (falsely) as official church dogma, is unacceptable to me. I'm grateful so many others have done the hard legwork to prove that it isn't necessarily what the church has taught, or what Christ said.
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I admit I find atheists who convert fascinating in a kind of horrified way. I even understand the impulse, to want to believe. Short of having a personal revelation convincing enough to make me believe (and not convince me I am hallucinating or losing my mind), though, I cannot see how I would ever become religious again. I am completely convinced in a materialistic universe, and while the universe is vast and obviously we cannot know everything and God could be hiding in innumerable unfalsifiable ways, nothing, no apologetics, no personal testimonies, no inductive reasoning, has ever been plausible enough to make me abandon the evidence of my senses and my reason.
I am well familiar with the debate over universalism versus infernalism, as you put it, though. It was one of my greatest concerns in my Christian days, and it is the thing I argue with Christians about most often, on the rare occasions I do argue with them now.
From my perspective, universalism is the "nice" and comforting version of salvation that kind Christians who cannot stomach the thought of friends and loved ones burning in hell convince themselves of. Damnation is what those who are either Biblical literalists believe in (and they go through all sorts of mental contortions to convince themselves that it is both a just fate and something they could be at peace with, watching from heaven as their former friends and loved ones scream in hell for eternity), or the unkind Christians who just like the idea of their not-friends getting what's coming to them.
Religious believers, in my experience, choose a priori what they want to believe (whether it is that their enemies will burn, or no one will burn) and fit scripture to match it.
That's not an indictment of you. You're nice and don't want to believe people could burn in hell for eternity, so you found a Biblical interpretation that makes that not true. I've got friends and family who do the same. And to be honest, when I was a believer, my thinking was similar to yours. If I did believe in God, I would not be capable of believing in a supposedly benevolent deity who judges that any mortal, no matter how awful they were in one short mortal lifetime, could possibly deserve to be tortured for all of eternity. Especially if that could be a punishment not just for being evil, but simply for choosing the wrong religion.
But honestly, I don't think your scriptural interpretation is necessarily sounder than that of the infernalists.
You cited a number of verses and Church doctrines used to justify eternal damnation and did your best to explain them away, but it's no less rationalizing than the exclusive salvationists who rationalize in the other direction. I note you did not address John 14:6: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." This is the verse most often used by fundamentalists to argue for the exclusive salvationist position, that all who do not accept Jesus will go to hell. Of course universalists have a response to that too. But it's all just special pleading.
@rae was a little harsh, but I basically believe the same thing: the God of the Bible is a vengeful Bronze age deity who talks about doing Bronze age god shit to His enemies in the Old Testament, and then comes in with forgiveness and mercy for his enemies in the New Testament, and you have to go through a lot of mental gymnastics to convince yourself they are the same god.
For what it's worth, that is not what I do. Not on this topic, nor any other topic concerning faith. I've gone from being raised a non-denominational Christian, to agnostic, to being a Christian again, to being Catholic specifically, all on the basis of my ability to discern the truth as best I can. I try to remain open to new ideas or arguments, and not just confirm my biases. I'm not perfect, of course, but I am genuinely trying. So inasmuch as your experience in life includes me (not much, sure, but not zero either), you at least know some religious believers who don't do what you have observed.
I think that "a little harsh" doesn't quite cover it. Rae came in here purely to vent his spleen in a way that was unproductive and frankly a real dick move. I didn't bother to get into it with him because there's no point arguing with someone that angry about the topic that they will go out of their way to shit on someone else's beliefs, but it was a really crappy thing to post.
No one thinks they do.
I don't think anyone consciously does this. Everyone says they are earnestly seeking the truth and open to being persuaded. All religious believers are rational truth-seekers who genuinely weighed all competing theologies and independently arrived at the most correct one (which just happens to be, 90% of the time, the one they grew up with). I'm sorry, I'm not trying to snark at you, but that's just literally what I hear from every single religious convert, from the Bible-thumping exclusive salvationist to the niqabbed Muslim girl going to an Islamic university.
But without fail, God's personality always reflects the personality of the believer. I've never met an angry, resentful Christian who believed God wanted him to embrace the people he hated in brotherly love- at best he might admit that he has a problem with anger and needs to learn how to forgive (but those fuckers are still gonna burn in hell). I've never met a kind-hearted, forgiving and gentle Christian who was very sad about how God was going to throw his non-Christian neighbors into the Lake of Fire to burn for all eternity, but was nonetheless convinced this was their just reward for denying Christ. God is always cruel or kind in proportion to his followers.
I understand that you cannot know for a fact how a person's mind works, and that it is certainly possible for a person to be lying to you, or even themselves, about the thought process they followed to get to where they are. But it sounds like you're skirting dangerously close to an unfalsifiable belief here, because it seems like you are alleging that even if someone isn't consciously doing confirmation bias rather than truth seeking, that just means they're unconsciously doing that. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but that would be a pretty large claim to make, and also one which is quite unfalsifiable (and should be scrutinized very hard indeed as a result).
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I think it helps that I was never a serious Christian, became an atheist pretty much immediately upon encountering real questions and difficulty as a boy. Falling away from faith and coming back seems like it may be harder, somehow?
But yes, ultimately strict materialism is basically a closed loop, can't be disproven. That itself is part of what made me question it. Then again I'm a bit of a weird Christian anyway.
I appreciate the rest of your points. I'd say that one of the biggest problems with the history of the church is we lose sight of how mysterious Christ is, and how strange the things He said were. David Bentley Hart does a great job explaining this, but the biggest mistake Christians make is that we think it's all figured out. I don't believe it is.
Ultimately in a modern (or post-modern) world we are all interpreting things like Protestants, whether we like it or not. No believer of any religion who wants to live in modernity has the luxury of just blindly believing on what is sometimes wrongly called 'faith.' I am willing to use my reason, my heart, and my moral intuitions in conjunction to inform my beliefs, and don't see a problem with that.
In terms of believing in Christ, I get it! It's weird and crazy and doesn't make a lot of sense. I had personal experiences that convinced me. I'm not here to convince you, if you don't have similar evidence I don't necessarily see myself convincing you. I wouldn't have been convinced.
Frankly I had to go through some horrible shit before I was humbled enough to start questioning my materialistic philosophy. I genuinely hope you don't have to go through anything similar.
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As an non religious guy (cultural Christian?) that enjoys reading about nuances in Christian teaching, I liked this! Sadly, this type of discussion seems pretty rare.
I didn't even know the terms universalism and infernalism but I knew the concepts - nice to put a name to a concept. On the popularity of infernalism, I guess it's because fear of hell is an easy to apply, reasonably powerful motivator that can be taught to children with low effort.
Yes exactly, I think this is a huge factor. In the early church it wasn't nearly as popular, but as the church grew in power and gained more control, we started using more blunt instruments I guess. Protestants really took this to an extreme with their obsession around making absolutely sure they were saved.
Which, you know, if you believe in eternal damnation, makes sense that you would be obsessed with figuring out how to be saved!
Anyway, glad you found it interesting. It is definitely not super common to discuss, largely because the traditional Christian churches are full of people who don't think very deeply about anything and scream "heretic!" any time someone brings up a theological concept that goes against their limited worldview. It has definitely been a frustrating part of my own conversion to Christianity, but luckily there are many intellectual Christians as well, they just tend to be a bit quieter.
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If you are relying on your moral intuitions anyway, why even go with the Christian God and have to go through these tortured interpretations to bend the Bible to your moral values? The Biblical God is obviously a wrathful, evil deity who is responsible for the pain and suffering of billions upon billions of humans and engages in cosmic blackmail to get you to love and worship him.
At best, he is callously indifferent and neglectful, at worst, he watches with glee with every child that dies in agony of a cancer he purposefully created. While a father cries holding his daughter’s lifeless hand, God sentences her soul to an eternity of hellfire without a second thought, because he can forgive anything, except not giving him the worship and adulation he desperately craves.
They are the worshippers of a narcissistic, genocidal cosmic horror from the Bronze Age, at least they have the gall to admit that one should live in fear of the monster, rather than pretend it loves us while it spares only the ones it deems sufficiently servile, torturing or annihilating everyone else.
I'm not relying entirely on my moral intuitions, though I am relying on them in terms of finding a church.
The Biblical God is not obviously evil, have you heard of something called the New Testament?
I would continue to reply but the rest of your post shows you aren't interested in actually discussing this, just insulting someone you disagree with.
I’m sorry it came across as insulting, that wasn’t my intention. You’re obviously a very moral, compassionate person who’s experienced a lot of pain, and I’m glad that you’re able to find community because that’s the most important thing in life.
@Amadan put it in much nicer and more coherent way, and I suppose there’s just no way for me to understand your perspective. You seem to be aware of the contradictions, of the problem of evil, of the injustice of eternal damnation, so you do all this work to find an interpretation of Christianity that doesn’t make God to be evil. But why? Why not reject Christianity in favour of something like Gnosticism or Zoroastrianism or just personal spirituality, or say the Bible is the imperfect work of man and that God is best known through personal revelation?
Hey no worries I forgive ya. Sounds like you have been through a lot in your time as well. I hope you find a community, if you don't have one already.
I mean, the short answer to me is that I tried all the gnosticism and buddhism and other personal spirituality for a long, long time and it didn't work. Well over ten years. Perhaps it's utilitarian of me, but coming to Christ is the first thing that started to make my life better when I was in a really difficult place. I was extremely skeptical when I first starting considering it, and frankly I still have a lot of doubts and questions and wonder what the heck I'm even doing. But I know that I feel much better, and act as a much better person, when I go to church regularly, pray, and invest in my faith.
Jordan Peterson talks a lot about different kinds of truths. There's 'objective' truth (which has a lot of problems), but there's also a sort of personal truth, or experiential truth, or narrative truth. He pulls heavily from Carl Jung as well. John Vervaeke has a great series going into the distinction at points too, Awakening From the Meaning Crisis While I don't fully agree with the Peterson/Jung framework anymore, it helped me realize that there is more to life than 'objective' truth, and opened the range of what I would consider as a realistic worldview quite a bit.
Anyway, conversions are complicated and messy things ultimately. I couldn't really explain exactly how it happened even if I wanted to, nobody can. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity, and I took it. It's not always easy but I am grateful as my life has, as I said, gotten far better in almost every way.
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Reported for violating rule:
Why should I believe in God? Why should I believe in Hell? Why should I believe in an eternal soul that outlives my body? Why should I believe anything written in the Bible? Why should I believe anything a bunch of ignorant dead men said?
Why are you even in this thread if you don't believe in God? If you don't, the entire topic is moot so you can ignore it and go about your day.
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This is inflammatory/antagonistic. Report things violating the rules, don't tell people you are reporting them for violating the rules. If it bothers you a bunch don't respond to the person.
Because generally if it doesn't break the rules and you just reported it then we can just click approve and move on. But if you are going to make pronouncements about the rules we have to correct the public record.
So no, claiming that the Christian god exists is not partisan and inflammatory. I say that as an atheist. People do not need to justify the entire basis of their beliefs just to speak here. We don't require conservatives to prove that tradition is good and useful. We don't require progressives to prove inequality is bad. We don't require communists to justify the labor theory of value. We don't require libertarians to provide their ideal alternative to government.
The rules are not meant to be used as a bludgeon to silence people. They are specifically meant to stop people from doing that.
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You know what, we don't mod people for reporting posts, no matter how stupid and baseless the report (I have asked @ZorbaTHut, and his position is that we should not under any circumstances make people afraid to use the report button), so this is not an official mod warning. But I'm just going to tell you directly: stop being a jerk. Do not abuse the report button.
"Proactively provide evidence" is an excuse often used to report posts that the reporter strongly disagrees with. Positions or beliefs you strongly disagree with are not inherently "inflammatory" just because you don't like them, and in particular, belief in gods is not "partisan" in a culture war sense or the sense in which we discourage people from making inflammatory, evidence-free, partisan claims. This forum is an offshoot of an offshoot of rationalist forums, but it is not by charter a rationalist or atheist forum.
If someone started preaching that other people are going to go to hell if they don't accept Jesus, or that only Catholics will go to heaven and everyone else is damned, or that Catholics are damned because they worship the Pope, or that the fire awaits all who do not accept Allah and his Prophet, we'd probably mod them for being obnoxious and using the forum for soapboxing. But a post talking about theology or belief in God is not against forum rules.
This is coming from an atheist: don't be That Kind of Atheist. If you can't stand to engage with religious people at all, just scroll on by.
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As far as I'm aware, those rules apply only to the Culture War Thread, and not to main Motte posts. I'd be happy to ask @self_made_human or @cjet79 for clarification though.
The rules apply everywhere. I'll address ace directly this post does not violate the rules.
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I read OP as "conditional on believing in {the Christian God, hell, eternal souls, etc}, you should believe in non-eternal hell", not as "you should believe in {...}". That makes it not particularly inflammatory nor partisan (unless we have a large contingent of ardent infernalists around), and given that this is hardly well-trodden ground for the forum I don't think it's obviously below evidential standards for the topic. You might make a charge of irrelevance, but I think we have a lot of Christians or Christianity-curious people here, and for the rest of us it's an interesting enough view into a strange mindset.
Hah I'm glad you think it's an interesting view, even if it's still a strange mindset.
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Is it the universalist belief that Satan will also be reconciled with God?
Depends on the universalist belief. Personally I believe all human souls will be reconciled - I don't go as far as the demons and Satan. Some like Origen did, however. That's much closer to heresy in my view.
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